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I would gladly pay companies such as Google for the technology. Google and Vorbis are doing the right thing. Algorithms should NEVER be patented and cost anything.
They should just mention the costs which need to be covered, and we will cover them! Then - no payments. Freedom for everyone.

I am very thankful to Igor Pavlov for 7zip, which I can use instead of RAR drug hook from Roshal.

Essentially, we are supporting microsoft and MPEG LA. We pay them, they get bigger, they patent much more new technology and obligate us to pay, they will support legal acts in your country in this direction. For your money. They don't get even penny from me, sorry. My money goes ONLY to engineers and ONLY for their work.

Fluendo codecs are Legal but many in the FOSS are not legal to redistribute[hence why many distros ship nerfed ffmpeg/libavbuilds] in many countries/mined with patent and is some cases are subpar[certain type of WMV3 videos], so if you wanna full fledged codecs[except windows DRM support] fluendo give them to you and those are legal to use[they pay licence to patent holders/owners]

the DVD player is the same story since we play DVD on linux illegally cracking in realtime the CSS encryption[libdvdcss] of the media, well they sell you an app that can play legally those DVD.

they are not free since fluendo have to pay a fee to patent holders/owners to be able to stay in the legal side.

Libdvdcss really is in legal limbo, no court cases have been brought against it, and there are memorandum that hint it should be legal as it is done for interoperability. However if you've got a big enough target on your back (a high ratio between you assess and usage instances) you may want to cover your behind with fluendo. Otherwise the chance that you are on the wrong end of the first case is quite low. (I am not a lawyer, and this post in no way constitutes legal advice)

Fluendo codecs are Legal but many in the FOSS are not legal to redistribute[hence why many distros ship nerfed ffmpeg/libavbuilds] in many countries/mined with patent and is some cases are subpar[certain type of WMV3 videos], so if you wanna full fledged codecs[except windows DRM support] fluendo give them to you and those are legal to use[they pay licence to patent holders/owners]

the DVD player is the same story since we play DVD on linux illegally cracking in realtime the CSS encryption[libdvdcss] of the media, well they sell you an app that can play legally those DVD.

they are not free since fluendo have to pay a fee to patent holders/owners to be able to stay in the legal side.

Codecs are not illegal. In very few countries (about 5) you have to pay a fee to use them. DVD playing also needs "circumventing" an encryption (unless your player has a valid key), which might be illegal under US law.

Unless you live in one of those few countries, in the case of an Ubuntu based distro, all you need is one of the *ubuntu-restricted-extras package. You should NOT tick the "enable mp3 playback" thing in the installer, because that will install fluendo's (playback only) codecs. Fluendo pays the annual fees, like Microsoft or Apple does for their OSes to use h264 and mp3. For encoding, the fee is higher.

For the vast majority of people around the world, installing, and using a codec without paying nothing is legal. Only people living in the few countries with a law enforcing the concept of "software patent", are in need to pay fees. There is HUGE worldwide opposition to software patents, its basically few (mostly US) corporations against the world.

I wouldn't be opposed to making a purchase if in part it helps support GStreamer, but according to Wikipedia, "in 2007, most of the core GStreamer developers left Fluendo, including GStreamer maintainer Wim Taymans who went on to co-found Collabora Multimedia together with other GStreamer veterans, while others joined Sun Microsystems, Oblong and Songbird" (source). So how involved is Fluendo in GStreamer these days?

As far as i can tell from the collabora webpage there are not looking for donations, and make there money from doing consultancy, development and training. they have open vacancies ( https://www.collabora.com/about/vacancies/ ) so they can't be too hard up for cash.

Maybe I'm naughty, but I can't see any reason to pay some random entity to use audio & video codecs that some other entity claims to own. I don't care where I live, I'm never going to purchase codecs for linux out of fear of running afoul of some law.

I know this makes no sense but in my muddled mind I think I already paid for codec licenses when I bought my laptop that was installed with windows.